In "Overcoming Epistemology", Charles Taylor argues that the epistemological turn that began with Descartes -- characterized by the interdependency of such notions as the detached subject, representational knowledge, instrumental reason and social atomism -- is played out. He further contends that there can be no return to the predecessor of epistemology, namely participatory knowledge, according to which mind and object are informed by and so share in the same essence. Instead he finds hope in what he calls "transcendental arguments", exemplified by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Transcendental arguments, he says, ask after what must be the case for our experience to be what it is. Along the way he casts aspersion at the so-called "Neo-Nietzscheans" -- Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard -- who go too far in the rejection of reason altogether.

Considering that both Lyotard and Nancy (who presumably would also count as "Neo-Nietzschean" for Taylor) are deeply motivated by what they see as the shortcomings of precisely the same epistemological tradition that Taylor criticizes, we might ask to what extent they, too, deal in "transcendental argument". This is definitely the case for Lyotard. Further, the postmodern might ask after the extent of Taylor's residual attachment to the epistemological tradition, despite his criticisms: does Taylor's search for the "correct" model of knowledge, the "correct" transcendental argument, as such overly restrict what might count as a valid transcendental argument?

Or, from the side of the spurned ancient/medieval tradition, we might ask whether transcendental arguments are a new thing. Isn't "asking what must be the case if ..." the very question that led to Plato's "mixed being" and Aristotle's actual/potential distinction. And wasn't the quia argument, which reasons from effects to causes, one of the basic forms of argument for the Scholastics? (And when I say "from effects to causes", I mean from effects to ἀιτίαι: those things which are responsible for something being the way it is.) Isn't the very νοῦς/εἴδος distinction he rejects achieved this way as well?